Your mileage may vary...

I suppose I should have begun my review of Microsoft's E3 XBox presser with the disclaimer: I am a PC gamer. I do not own an XBox; I have never owned any gaming console. My Steam Link is as close to console ownership as I've ever come, and that does not look likely to change in the foreseeable future.

XBox's Play Anywhere initiative means that everything released for XBox is also released for Windows. And since nobody buys games from the wasteland of shit that is the Windows Microsoft Store, that means that they'll be coming to Steam, too. Which means that I'll have all of those games to look forward to, once I've played through some of my list of shame. The fact that almost none of them will be out this year is not an issue for me.

Some actual XBox One owners, however, appear to feel differently. Apparently, there was some expectation that Microsoft would have first-party exclusive 2018 releases to announce, in spite of the fact that Microsoft had said last year that nothing of the sort would be happening. This year's XBox E3 was always going to be about XBox's future; it was always going to be about waiting for next year, having missed the playoffs this year.

Will Microsoft attract new gamers to the XBox ecosystem? Will this conference turn around the XBox's fortunes, or reverse their momentum relative to the Nintendo Switch? No. No, it won't.

And Microsoft are totally honest about this. They're already talking about being hard at work on the next generation of XBox consoles, having lost this generation with no real hope of turning that around. And Play Anywhere, the legacy of Microsoft's failed Windows 10 strategy, means that the next generation XBox won't have any exclusive games, either.

If you're an XBox owner, I can understand if you're disappointed by that. If you're a more platform-agnostic gamer, though, then Microsoft's dedication to empowering the likes of Ninja Theory to make more games is good news. The fact that they're investing in gaming, rather than plotting an exit
strategy, is good news. Their dedication to backwards compatibility is good news.

Cross-platform development is the future of gaming. Even Sony, who arguably won this console generation, are talking about moving away from hardware and towards content-delivery services. The dearth of XBox-exclusive titles is just the way the industry is headed, now. I've been saying since March of 2016 that this would be the last console generation, and my opinion on that has not changed.

I factored all of that in, and still gave this show an A- grade. That's how good the show was.

Whether or not you heard the specific piece of news that you wanted during their presser, the fact that Microsoft put on a well-planned, well-executed, and high effective show is simply undeniable. The fact that it comes about two years too late to save the XBox does not diminish the quality of the show they staged at this year's E3.